You Can't Quit Me
by dazzley
Summary: Takao gripes about the loss of his team-mates, and Hitoshi has had enough of it. Brotherly bonding of sorts commences. Slight TaKa and HiTa if you squint. One-shot.


The water is burning his skin.

That's all he's really able to comprehend right now. The beads of water run down his currently sensitive skin and leave tiny tracks as they go. Tiny tracks of bright pink. They pound against his face like tiny soldiers that are battling a great enemy. But this pain soothes him. Not his body, obviously, but his mind. It gives him something else to concentrate on but _them_.

The bathroom is steamed all up; even the mirror above the sink is completely fogged over. Hitoshi had told him not to waste hot water (it doesn't grow on trees, you know!) and to take a quick shower. Takao had ignored him and has spent the last hour simply standing in the shower with the steaming hot water pounding down on his skin. Takao knows that there are other people waiting on the shower, but he can't get himself to care about them right now.

Hitoshi knocks on the door for the fifth time since Takao has been in there, "You're going to pass out in there if you keep it up, Takao!" and as usual Takao responds, "I'm _almost_ done!" while he continues to stand there with his eyes closed. Of course, Hitoshi does not believe him but leaves him alone. He plans on busting in the door if Takao refuses to come out in another half an hour.

"What is he _doing_ in there?" Hiromi asks as she falls back onto the sofa in the living room area of the hotel room. Daichi is salivating on a rather large cookie, one covered in chocolate and powdered sugar, so he can't exactly respond. Not that he would anyway. He doesn't know that Takao is scalding himself in the shower. Hiromi eyes him with a bit of disgust, "Gee, Daichi, you're going to choke if you just keep _downing_ it like that."

Takao reaches for the shampoo and flicks the cap open. With a squeeze the coconut-y smelling shampoo squirts out into the palm of his hand. It's white and fluffy, kind of like whipped cream, only whipped cream doesn't smell like coconut. Or have flakes of chemicals in it or whatever the shampoo company puts into their shampoo.

He works it into his thick black hair, right to the scalp, and the foam from the mixture of water and shampoo streams down his face and into his eyes. It burns, but he doesn't really care. He just presses his eyes closed and bites the bottom of his lip, which actually causes some of the shampoo to get into his mouth.

It doesn't taste like coconut, which is a shame, really. Someone should invent that. Delicious tasting shampoo. That way Takao can spend another few hours in this shower without going hungry. He presses his hand against the wall. It's very cold against his skin, the tile, because it doesn't retain heat. The shampoo runs through his hair as the water pounds down on his scalp and shoulders, and the suds run down his body and into the drain.

Next is the conditioner. He squirts some of that into his hand as well; it's milky but solid at the same time. Well, not really solid. It's kind of like a wet gelatin. He rubs that into his hair too and shakes his head like a dog. Some suds go flying into the curtain and slash onto the wall. There's more banging on the bathroom door, "Hey, Takao! Hurry up, okay? I want to use the shower too and I don't want the water to be cold." That's the Chief.

"I'm almost done," he says, "I just have to wash the conditioner out. The Chief doesn't say anything else so Takao assumes he's gone back into the living room. He shakes his head again, stands of hair plaster against his face, and then he rubs his head clean of all suds.

Hitoshi sighs. "Chief, I'm sure there's another bathroom here that you can use. You shouldn't have to wait so long. Hiromi, why don't you take Daichi down to the restaurant?" The Chief looks up at the team's coach, "Are you sure? I don't really mind waiting for him to finish." Hiromi seems to get the jest of what Hitoshi is trying to say, so she simply nods her head.

"Sure," she says, "I don't mind. But I'm not sure if I have enough money to pay for all the food he's probably going to eat…" "Oh, shut up, you old hag, okay! I'mma eat what I can _pay_ for so just shut upppp!" Daichi responds with a small hair-pull. She's been lecturing him ever since the comment about swallowing his cookie too quickly, and he's had _enough_.

"What did you call me!?" she asks with a screech, "I am _not an old hag._" The look on her face is pretty ferocious, so Hitoshi can think of nothing better to do than to pick Daichi up by the belt and toss him out into the hallway. Hiromi lunges out of the room to get at the fallen blader and Hitoshi takes this opportune moment to close the room door and lock it.

The Chief had made his escape when Daichi had started calling Hiromi names. He knows what to expect when stuff like this happens.

A good fifteen minutes later Takao turns off the water. The bathroom is completely fogged up, so much that he has a hard time finding the towel rack and his clothes.

He grabs a towel and rubs his head thoroughly until his hair is frizzy from static electricity It actually stands up at weird angles he had rubbed so hard. He pulls on his clothes quickly, in contrast to his forever in getting out of the shower, and grabs a comb. He looks in the mirror and blinks. It's totally fogged up. He grins and scribbles a few words on the mirror, and draws a pair of beyblades. He likes his mirror-art so much that he decides to not wipe it away and leave it there for the next person to use the bathroom to see.

He combs out his long hair without much care. There are tons of knots in his hair from the constant hairflipping and shaking, so he yanks the comb through his hair to get them out. It hurts a little bit but he's been doing it like this for years. He pulls, pulls, pulls and his hair rips, rips, rips. After about five minutes of this grueling self-torture he puts down the brush and runs his fingers through his still wet hair. It'll probably get tangled again before long, but for now it's good. He grabs his hair tie and pulls his self-proclaimed tresses back into a low ponytail. His bangs flop in his face and he pushes them to the side.

He doesn't bother with his baseball cap right now because he just got out of the shower; he plans to put that on once his hair dries. His skin is still red from the beating it received from the practically scalding hot water, but Takao doesn't mind. He pushes out of the bathroom and into the bedroom. "Okay, I'm done!" he shouts, "Chief! Chieeef! Hey, Chief! Are you ignoring me?"

Takao peeks into the living room only to see that Hitoshi is there. Only Hitoshi. "Hey, where'd everyone go?" he asks as he walks into the room, "They were just here!" "Like you'd know," Hitoshi responds, "You spent almost two hours in the shower." "I did not!" Takao responds as he glances around for the clock, "I got in there at three! It's… four…thirty. See? Only an hour and a half!"

The older brother does not look impressed, "Congratulations. That's still an insanely long time, you know. It's not like you had an extreme work-out or got covered in crap and needed to wash it off." Takao gives his brother a good long stare before saying anything. "Why do you _care_?" he says finally, "Since when is good hygiene a _sin_? Yeesh, Hitoshi."

Takao gives his older brother an eye roll before turning around to head back into the bedroom. However, it seems like Hitoshi has other plans. "Get over it, Takao."

Takao freezes when he hears his brother say these words. Hitoshi is watching his younger sibling expectantly, half expecting him to either burst out in tears or to smash a hole in the wall. Hitoshi knows his brother well. He's either going to have to pay for fixing a wall or dry-cleaning because of tearstains on his new suit.

"You know what I'm talking about, okay? So don't even try to brush me off. This is affecting your blading and your _mind_, Takao," Hitoshi continues, "You haven't been blading well at _all_. I'm telling this because I care about you. I don't want you to go through something like depression because you're in _denial_."

Takao slams his fist against the wall. His voice is rough, almost like he's on the verge of tears, "_You don't know what you're talking about._" He's still not facing Hitoshi but the older boy can tell Takao is mad. He has a really quick temper, he really does. When it comes to his friends. Or, his ex-friends. Whatever you want to call them.

"I think I _do_, Takao," Hitoshi continues. He's calm about this. Unlike Takao, he has been expecting this confrontation. "I don't want to talk about it," Takao says quickly, "I'm fine. It doesn't bother me. So _what_ if I got left behind? I don't care. I… don't care." But from the tone of Takao's voice, Hitoshi knows that this is a lie.

Hell, even Takao knows that this is a lie. He doesn't want to think about them. Max. Rei. Kai. They left him. Just like _that_.

"You _do_ care," Hitoshi says, "Turn around. I don't like talking to your back." Takao reluctantly turns and presses his back against the wall he's just punched. His face is flushed with what seems to be anger and frustration, but Hiroshi can see something else there. He can't exactly name it. But it's there.

"Come on, Takao. Sit next to me," Hitoshi says as he scoots over on the couch to make room for Takao to sit. Takao just shakes his head and his wet bangs plaster to his face. Stupid wet bangs. He brushes them away with his hands and wipes his eyes with his sleeve. He's not crying so much as tearing up a little bit.

"So you're saying I'm a bad blader, huh? That I've lost my touch?" Takao asks with a slight edge to his voice, "I've just been having an off day!" "More like an off _month_, Takao," Hitoshi responds with a similar edge to his own voice. Takao kicks at the floor with his foot. He accidentally stubs his toe while he does this but resists the urge to whimper.

Hitoshi is leaning on the arm of the sofa now, in a lazy manner. Almost like a cat after its had its dinner and is ready for a good nap. Only Hitoshi doesn't look like he's about to doze off. Takao isn't that lucky. Rather, he keeps talking, "You're mad that Kai left you for another team. You're mad that Max and Rei both left you before he did. But you've got to get over it."

Takao's face is now hidden by his bangs again. They managed to get plastered to his face again somehow. It's kind of like Takao's face has a hair magnet built into it. He speaks, "I… Kai does that a lot. He… he leaves. But he'll come back to me. He always comes back to me."

Hitoshi just watches Takao. The boy presses on, "Max and Rei… they have to come back. They might…might be on different teams now but they _have_ to come back. They have to!"

"It sounds to me like you're just trying to convince _yourself_, Takao," Hitoshi drawls, "Are you sure you don't want to sit next to me? The couch is a lot more comfortable than that wall." Takao is banging his fist into the wall again. Not an all out punch this time, just slight banging. Thump thump thump.

After a few minutes of silence and thumping Takao finally makes his way over to the couch. He sits awkwardly next to Hitoshi. He doesn't really want to sit next to his brother like this but he knows that Hitoshi won't stop asking him to sit with him until he does. Plus he _did_ spend an hour and a half standing up in the shower. He should have brought a chair in there with him.

Hitoshi is talking now but Takao isn't really listening. But from the tone of Hitoshi's voice it's some kind of lecture that the older boy probably prepared in advance. Instead of listening to his brother, Takao actually studies him. He's wearing a suit, natural considering Hitoshi is some kind of business man, and a sweet smelling cologne.

Why on earth his brother is wearing cologne, Takao has no idea. Hitoshi's hair is perfect and there isn't a strand out of place, quite unlike Takao's unruly mane. All he does is pull it back with a hair tie and leave it at that.

"Do you understand what I'm telling you, Takao?" Hitoshi's voice is a little softer now as he addresses his younger sibling. Takao just nods his head. If he agrees, it'll be over, right? But Hitoshi doesn't seem content with this. "So, what did I just tell you?"

Takao blinks and tilts his head to the side, "You told me that I'm a terrible blader and that I should get over my friends leaving me." Hitoshi resists the urge to slam his hand against his face, "Takao!" The younger boy shrugs and leans against his brother. Hitoshi blinks, and after a second he puts an awkward hand on top of Takao's head.

"… Why don't you talk, Takao?" Hitoshi asks, "I know it's bothering you. The last time I remember you spending two hours in the shower was when your turtle died." Takao shrugs and wraps an arm around his older brother's waist, almost so that he's lying on top of him. If anyone walked into the room right now they'd be intruding in on a very sensitive moment.

"He only died because I forgot to feed him," Takao says, "And he got mad at me and tried to run away." Hitoshi doesn't really know how to respond to this, so he doesn't. The turtle had died because Takao had accidentally flushed him down the toilet. It wasn't a topic he brought up if he could help it.

But the younger boy continues, "I guess I'm just sore. I…wanted Kai to be my partner. I really did. I still do." He doesn't have anything against Daichi… well, not _much_ against the red-head. He _did_ eat his cookie.

"But I'll… get over it."

Hitoshi strokes the top of Takao's head in a comforting manner, something he probably would never do for anyone else. What's wrong with a little brotherly bonding? "You better," Hitoshi says, "If you ever want to blade well. I'm sure they're not letting the split-up get _them_ down. They're going to be in top condition, and you have to be ready for them, Takao."

"I know, I know," Takao snuggles his face into Hitoshi's chest. Hitoshi feels the wetness from Takao's tears through his clothes and he resists a sigh. Now isn't the time to think about the dry-cleaning bill. They don't say anything else. They seem to have reached an understanding, _some_ kind of understanding. And Hitoshi supposes that this is good enough for now.


End file.
